Intensive Household Survey reveals dearth of LPG connections

Ironically, thousands of connections, allocated to the district, were not given to eligible beneficiaries due to the lethargic attitude of authorities. According to the survey, the district has 12,35,810 families, but only 7.50 lakh LPG connections were given to public under different schemes so far.

This means, a sum of around five lakh households were found to be relying on firewood for preparing their food. At present, there are 65 p-rivate gas agencies in the district, catering to 5.70 lakh connections.

In order to finalise the beneficiaries, authorities should conduct meetings in rural and urban areas. But, the process of selecting beneficiaries is not taking place at desired pace, denying LPG cylinders to poor families.

For instance, 1,33,602 connections were sanctioned to district under the Depam scheme during 2009-14. But, 89,036 connections were di-stributed to the deserving beneficiaries. The remaining 44,566 connections are yet to be given. This indicates sluggish distribution of the connections.

The civil supplies staff are blamed for failing to distri-bute the sanctioned connections to the eligible benefic-iaries by delaying the selection process. Meanwhile, government is planning to sanction 10,000 connections to each Assembly constituency. It has to be seen whether the the authorities will expedite the process of finalising the beneficiaries.